Spending Enjoyable Time Together

“Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth.”

(Proverbs 5:18)

Finding ways to sustain love involves spending enjoyable time together. Thriving couples build a strong friendship by continuing to date. They develop meaningful traditions, spend time with each other, laugh together, and look for adventure. They work together to find hobbies they can both enjoy. A healthy marriage has a good mixture of independence and togetherness, and happy couples are intentional about building their lives on a foundation of common values, interests, and goals.

How much time should you spend together? Answers to that question vary, but if you ask the best researchers, they generally respond “As much as you can.” Some specify a weekly amount. Recommendations range from eight to fifteen hours per week.

Naturally, the quantity of time husbands and wives spend together is only one Read more

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Stretching Their Limits

Last year, as our church planned its annual youth trip to Mexico, one dad took me aside. “I’m thinking about letting my 15-year-old daughter go, but I have one question. Can you guarantee it’s going to be safe?”

I looked him straight in the eye and said, “No.”

He was shocked.

“I can’t guarantee her safety,” I told him. “But I can guarantee you this. It’s going to be much safer for your daughter to travel to Mexico and go public about her faith, learn to serve, develop a heart of generosity and actually depend on God, than it will ever be for her to grow up in our community without stretching her faith or learning to take risks and follow the same daily routine where she thinks she doesn’t need God.”

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Healing the Wounds of Emotional Abuse

"There comes a critical time in each person’s life when the truth is accessible. Faced with it, you can either run and hide, denying it, or you can face your truth, accept it, and grow stronger," wrote Gregory Jantz in Healing the Scars of Emotional Abuse.

If you are reading this article, chances are you or someone you love is in an emotionally abusive relationship. Your abuser may be a spouse, a boss, a brother or a sister. You may have tried to ignore it, deny it and fix it. Perhaps you have even tried to accept it. But it hasn’t worked. This is your moment of truth. Are you willing to do what it takes to break the cycle of abuse in your life?

While the optimum situation is for both parties in an abusive situation to seek help, Dr. Tim Clinton, President of the American Read more

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Where Is God in the Midst of All My Troubles?

by J. Budziszewski

Trouble suffocates me. Worry entangles me. By night I can’t sleep, by day I can’t rest. The burden of suffering is intolerable. Where is God? Does He know, or are my prayers heard only by the wall? Is He near, or somewhere distant, only watching?

If you hurt enough to ask such questions, you deserve an answer.

Some people think that you don’t. You’re sick, you’re dying, you’ve been deserted, you’ve lost a child, you’re innocent but accused of wrongdoing — and they try to shush you. Their intentions may be good, but they are hard to bear. “Don’t question God’s ways; He might hear you.” In my cry of anguish, don’t I want Him to hear me? “It’s probably for your own good.” If I’m to be tormented for my own good, don’t I get a say in the matter? “I’m sure there’s a good reason.” Read more